The theft of 2,000 gems at the British Museum began 20 to 25 years ago, according to George Osborne, the chairman of the trustees. Following the theft, it has now been determined that that the museum has 2,400,000 uncatalogued or partially catalogued objects which need to be properly documented. Altogether the museum holds eight million objects, but of these two million do not realistically require cataloguing, including one million stone tool fragments from North Africa. Mark Jones, the new interim museum director, also gave evidence to the Commons committee. He said that the 2,000 uncatalogued objects stolen were "really known only to one person, and that person decided to take advantage of that”.
